I think that exams are all unnecessary and only hamper peoples education with the additional effects of seriously damaging social cohesion.
Why are exams bad for education? Well what else are exams for other than measuring someones capacity to do such-and-such a job? Do kids or students actually learn more due to the pressure of exams? IMHO they don’t - the anxiety and despondency caused is not conducive to learning which should be relaxed and informal where class sizes permit. The sole purpose of exams is to make it easier for employers to vet potential employees.
Why are exams bad for social cohesion? Well in secondary school, faced with the pressure of studying 5-8 subjects all with final exams falling in a 2 week period, the students either being confident in their ability take up the challenge, or doubting themselves don’t even try, thereby dispensing with the anxiety and tension from the outset.
So you have one group, the academic acheivers going hell for leather, and the other group who spurn academia altogether and deride their peers for their hard efforts.
There are not a few problems caused by this process.
What sticks out is depression & anxiety possibly leading to drug abuse and suicide either as a result of the pressure to succeed or the despondancy of being rejected by the system wholesale.
IMHO this can be the start of the criminal mindset - “i’ve been fked by the system so i’ll fck it back!” and is completely avoidable.
So division is caused, or possibly exacerbated (if you consider that the system antagonises the existant social problem of low confidence) in the young, and has seriously detrimental effects on both groups.
The question is, is it worth it for an employer to be able to pick and choose his labour? Only someone who has the confidence to do a job will apply for it anyway, except in the extreme minority of cases.
Another potential fallout of exams is that many students will “study for the exams” and focus their studies toward what is likely to be on the exam, rather than gaining a well-rounded knowledge of the subject matter.
Then there’s the matter of cheating… if a student can lay their hands on a copy of the final exam, they might not study and learn anything at all.
I think homework assignments and pop quizzes throughout the semester are probably a better indicator of whether, or what, the student has learned.
Trouble is, in many fields, massage therapy being one of them, the student has to pass a state or national exam in order to become licensed. In a situation like that, having to study for, and pass, a final exam, can give a person a leg-up on passing the exams required for licensing. But then, there are “study guides” available for these exams, so maybe not.
For most subjects, having the student turn in a written essay on the last day of class describing what they’ve learned would be a better indicator of learning than an exam. Then the only classes the person would need to study for would be the ones that require rote memorization (musculoskeletal anatomy, in my case. We have to memorize the locations on the bones that the muscles attach to, and shiatsu, we have to memorize the meridians and pressure points. I’m barely passing shiatsu…)
Oh come on… finals aren’t that bad. They’re just tests. If you think too much into what they represent or what imaginary consequences they may have, you’ll paralyze yourself worrying.
Just prepare as best you can and don’t dwell on them. Being at ease is one of the best test-taking tactics you can have- you won’t panic and you won’t choke up.
You’re exactly right, the purpose of the exam is for the student to demonstrate mastery over a particular subject. That’s good for education because teachers will know how well her students have mastered the subject and who needs extra assistance.
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They learn that steady work will result in a decent grade on their test. I personally don’t think most students suffer serious anxiety because of tests. I also don’t think the sole purpose of examps is to make it easier to judge potential employees. None of my employers asked about what I made in civics class in 1992.
Also I don’t see why every class should be relaxed and informal. Personally I think a little pressure should be applied to kids in order to help prepare them for life. How are they going to deal with stress in adulthood if they’ve never experienced stress as a kid?
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There’s no happy medium between the slacker who doesn’t care and the academic achievers?
Our society IIRC does crave a certain amount of pecking order. We cant all be the CEO of microsoft, or an olympic gold medalist in the 100m dash. Exams prepare us for the reality of competition, in jobs, in mates, and in life in general. Personally I think the schools are hurting us by trying to coddle us and save our self esteem when a lot more attitude adjustment is called for. Why should I work at being good at anything if I am never given the opportunity to prove my achievements. Or derive any benefit from my acheivement.
Making the person a less desireable mate and less likely to contribute to the gene pool. The underachievers crash and burn, the strong and the swift win. Get over it, life is not fair.
The same could be said for the good performers asking “why should my taxes, paid from my hard work and success, be used to support those who chose not to work as hard”
Nope we will always have a need for cheap manual labor.
Nope, plenty of people lie or embellish on applications all the time. Ask any HR manager, they get apps all the time from people who claim to have masters degrees at 21, 18 YO HS grads applying for management positions, people with no relevant skills or experience asking for $100K salaries. Luckily it is more likely that those who have been TESTED and have PASSED the tests of education will be selected for the greatest responsibility and rewards.
Oh, and kids, you might want to check out a book called The Bottom Half. The name of the author escapes me, but he found some pretty good evidence that most of the uber-acheivers in our society, whether it be in business, the arts, whatever, graduated college in the bottom half of their class.
The idea is that while they weren’t all that in the academic sense, they were creative free-thinkers, devoted themselves to pursuits that didn’t involve getting good grades, and thus had the mental flexibility to innovate, be good problem solvers, etc.
When a person leaves school, they are expected to have a certain level of competance in mathmatics, reading and writing as well as other subject areas. I see little alternative to verifying that a student has achieved this competancy other than through some form of examination.
The real world is competitive. People are expected to perform. If they can’t perform the tasks they are assigned, then they are replaced with someone who can. They don’t have the luxary of picking and choosing which aspects of their job they wish to be competant at.
Absolutely yes. It takes more than “confidence” to perform a job. It takes skills. Many jobs - finance, law, engineering, medicine and so on do not leave room for mistakes. Do you want a broker, lawyer, building engineer or doctor who graduated in the bottom of his class? Do you want a doctor or lawyer who turns to drugs or wallows in depression after every setback?
Employers do have time to filter out a thousand candidates who are grossly underqualified for positions. They want people who can handle stress. People who are disciplined and competant. They want people who don’t just throw up their hands and quit whenever something is too tough.
I don’t see how it is unfair. Why do the slackers deserve the same rewards as those willing to put in the time and effort to achieve something?
I highly doubt most “uber achievers” were in the bottom of their class. It sounds like anti-intellectual bullshit to me. It’s true that many people with low academic scores do go on to achieve success but I hardly think that academic mediocrity is something to aspire to.
I think thats a pretty valid point actually, but I think it might be true to say that people bring the stress they have carried from their childhood into the workplace. I don’t think any workplace is an inherently stressful place - its the people who cause the stress. People like drachillix. They get their balls busted and can’t wait to go bust 'em back.
I’ll take the one statement from his appaling post that tends towards reason:
The “underacheivers” in this case are those who start out at school with no prior education, no reading and writing skills, and no confidence. In short the poor. Life is not fair in that some poor and some aren’t, but I don’t think poverty is a necessary part of having an economy. If you resign yourself to the view that the consumer-capitalist economy is the best there could be, you are seriously deluding yourself.
Why not continually assess the student based on their ability to perform class exercises? There is absolutely no reason why this method would be less effective than exams although it would depend on the state’s education budget whether it was pragmatic, smaller class sizes being needed.
Exams are a quick and dirty method of assessment; its much cheaper to employ markers once a year than twice as many teachers all the time. I expect this is more to do with why the system relies on them than their inherent value.
msmith537:
I think you’re fudging the issue here somewhat. The fact that skills and the ability to deal with stress are both required aptitudes for the budding drone is absolutely consonant with my view. As I mentioned continuous assessment is a better way of ensuring that people have those skills.
About “stress”:
Lets not beat about the bush - “stress” means being unhappy because someone is busting your balls. This unhappiness is not an integral part of meeting challenges - its just a nasty disease that leaps from mind to mind.
Of course pressure is always there, but stress is the conditioned, not the natural response to that pressure. If we stop the conditioning in schools, there would be less stress in the workplace.
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Absolutely yes. It takes more than “confidence” to perform a job. It takes skills. Many jobs - finance, law, engineering, medicine and so on do not leave room for mistakes. Do you want a broker, lawyer, building engineer or doctor who graduated in the bottom of his class? *
No. Of course not. I want some arrogant sunuvabitch who gratduated at the top of the class and therefore thinks he can do no wrong. I want a doctor who won’t listen when I tell him my symptoms, or that I think the side effects of my medcation are worse than the condition they’re supposed to be treating because "I graduated at the top of my class, I know what’s best for you even though I haven’t been living in your body for thirty-six years. I want my house designed by an engineer who graduated at the top of his class and is so smart he can’t admit that he made a mistake because that’s what the engineering textbook he learned so well says he should do. I want a lawyer who passed the bar in the top percentile and can’t think “outside the box” of a different law or case study that might apply to my case than the ones that traditionally would be applied.
I’m not saying that academic mediocrity is something to be aspired to. I just think that exams are not generally a good tool for assessing whether the student has learned the material in a way that can be applied in real life. They mostly assess a person’s ability to regurgitate memorized facts and figures onto a piece of paper.
I spent a week studying for over an hour a day for my shiatsu final, and barely passed. I understand the theory and ideas behind Oriental medicine quite well, but what killed me was memorizing the exact points along the meridians and what they treat. It’s no big, really. I understand enough to work some shiatsu into my Swedish routine, but I don’t think I’ll be specializing in shiatsu. There are charts available on which I could discreetly look up a few points which might be used for a particular complaint. I have the ability to locate the points on the body by feel, even if I can’t put down on a piece of paper where they are.
In my musculoskeletal anatomy class, its a similar situation. I’m barely passing. I have a good handle on where each muscle begins and ends. I can point to the exact location on the body where the muscles attach, but even working heavily with flash cards, naming the particular bony landmark that each tendon attaches to is a bitch.
There are a few students in my class who are breezing through these classes, because their brains are quite attuned to memorizing facts and figures, but quite frankly, I wouldn’t want them working on me because they have neither the sensitivity of hands nor heart to be able to assess the needs of the client on the table and work according to them. They’ll go in with fists and elbows without determining if a person might have a tender spot in the area being worked on, not notice if someone is tensing up due to pain (something a massage therapist absolutely must be aware of) and even if the person say, “ouch, that hurts, go easy on that area”, they’ll keep using heavy pressure and not alter their technique. There are people who have “pokey fingers”, who won’t use a flat area of the hand or pad of a finger or thumb when working a sensitive spot.
They will do a lot better on the national certification exam than I will, but they will be lousy therapists.
I would rather have a doctor who graduated in the lower half of his class in med school who will do a thorough examination, spend time actually listening to me when I describe my symptoms, determine what type of tests are needed than one who graduated at the top and rushes me in and out of the exam room in ten minutes and has a pat diagnosis for a particular set of symptoms because that’s what he memorized from medical school.
I think a distinction should be made between the concept of examinations and the pecularities of their undertaking in real life.
The OP says exams are all unnecessary and only hamper peoples education with the additional effects of seriously damaging social cohesion.
The concept of evaluation is necessary. Exams are supposed to be controlled, well-designed and supervised devices of evaluation. They have multiple aims. By providing a supposedly objective authentic assessment, they aim to
[ul]
[li]to inform third parties on the progress of the student[/li][li]to provide a concrete motivation for the student to pay attention and study against the backdrop of a deadline(the exam). Back exams also help prioritise for the student the important concepts and topics from the vast data they imbibe[/li][li]to inform the student on his/her progress. Many a student think they “know” a topic until they actually have to sit down and solve a novel problem[/li][/ul]
But, of course, most exams tend to have the drawback that the parameters they actually measure don’t correlate with the objectives of the course study. From my experience, I can only attribute this to the social disharmony resulting from a truly and perhaps brutal meritocratic challenging exam like the international science olympiads or the Putnam exams. The present forms of exam material allow a sufficient escape route to achievement for most of those willing to expend brute effort.
I tend to agree with you that people cause stress. People who do not think through things, people who feel entitled to things they have not earned, and people who just flat out are not smart enough to wrap their brains around the concepts that make the world work. Like it or not half of us in any group are of below average intelligence, income, education, and ability.
What? So you can get into college without any reading or math ability? Well gee, thats nifty. Luckily you will have to learn math and reading to pass your tests, unless you want to cheat. Of course cheating could induce stress, because you are worried about being caught.
I hate to pick on grammar in a post since I have made some dazzling literary bellyflops in my time…but.
Would that be an english exam you are worried about?
Economics was not my specialty, but you may want to look into Pareto’s Law as applied to society. IIRC there is an economic principle that there must be a “poor” of sorts or a national economy does weird things.
Well until we all have replicators in our house and can order whatever whatever food, materials, tools, etc we need at any time for little or no cost. It does the job quite well.
I will admit there are better “theoretical” ways to run a society, but they won’t create an economic and technological powerhouse like the US in a similar amount of time.
Things like this are why many medical fields rely heavily on apprenticeship programs and hands on student training. Graduating #1 in your class does not automatically make one the best doctor. The guy who graduated last in his class can be just as much of an ass as the guy who was #1, and since he is probably less secure in his knowledge of the basics would that make him more or less likely to admit wrongdoing.
Estabishing consistent terminology is a key component to any specialty. Once everyone knows what and where the mastoid process is then you can simply refer to it as that, not, that little bony thing that sticks out from your skull, pointing downward, behind the ear.
How about one who graduated at the top half of his class who does a thorough examination, and requests the proper tests because he actually remembered the proper one needed for making a proper diagnosis in situations where it might not be the “pat diagnoisis”.
I don’t think any workplace is an inherently stressful place - its the people who cause the stress. People like drachillix. They get their balls busted and can’t wait to go bust 'em back.
Where do you work? Stress is caused by pressure to perform. Things need to get done at certain times and it isn’t allways according to your schedule. Having people depend on you is stressful. Making difficult split-second decisions that can affect peoples lives or cost the company millions of dollars is stressfull.
quote:
Originally posted by Meta-Gumble
Lets not beat about the bush - “stress” means being unhappy because someone is busting your balls. This unhappiness is not an integral part of meeting challenges - its just a nasty disease that leaps from mind to mind.
Why do managers “bust balls”? Because they are under a deadline to perform or complete a task. If a subordinate appears slow or incompetant or unknowledgeable at their job, the manager feels stress because that person might delay the project.
quote:
Originally posted by Meta-Gumble
The “underacheivers” in this case are those who start out at school with no prior education, no reading and writing skills, and no confidence. In short the poor. Life is not fair in that some poor and some aren’t, but I don’t think poverty is a necessary part of having an economy. If you resign yourself to the view that the consumer-capitalist economy is the best there could be, you are seriously deluding yourself.
The poor have every opportunity to learn to read and write in elementary school. It is the other factors that are a result of being poor that distracts them from education.
quote:
Originally posted by Meta-Gumble
Why not continually assess the student based on their ability to perform class exercises? There is absolutely no reason why this method would be less effective than exams although it would depend on the state’s education budget whether it was pragmatic, smaller class sizes being needed.
Maybe you should clarify what you are talking about. I read from the OP that you are against testing and that students should be allowed to learn at their own pace in a loose and relaxed manner.
quote:
Originally posted by Meta-Gumble
I think you’re fudging the issue here somewhat. The fact that skills and the ability to deal with stress are both required aptitudes for the budding drone is absolutely consonant with my view. As I mentioned continuous assessment is a better way of ensuring that people have those skills.
Like it or not, 90% of us are training to be “drones” - that is to say, in someone elses employ.
quote:
Originally posted by Thea Logica
No. Of course not. I want some arrogant sunuvabitch who gratduated at the top of the class and therefore thinks he can do no wrong. I want a doctor who won’t listen when I tell him my symptoms, or that I think the side effects of my medcation are worse than the condition they’re supposed to be treating because "I graduated at the top of my class, I know what’s best for you even though I haven’t been living in your body for thirty-six years. I want my house designed by an engineer who graduated at the top of his class and is so smart he can’t admit that he made a mistake because that’s what the engineering
That sounds like your issues to me.
The point is that the doctor at the bottom of his class might misdiagnose your disorder because he knows just the bare minimum. The engineer at the bottom of his class might make a careless error because he often makes careless errors. The lawyer might blow my case because he didn’t memorize all the applicable laws.
I’m sorry but I don’t share your view that somehow “street” experience, intuition and common sense can somehow trump formalized training. Before you can think “outside the box”, you need to know the fundamentals.
And as an employer, why should I take the chance that the C student will be an A employee? If he can’t master the skills I need in the classroom, am I supposed to believe he will master them on the job?
Not every job can be performed through trial and error. Some positions require someone who does know their shit cold without having to look it up in a reference book.
They say the child is father to the man so I guess that applies to everything someone brings to the workplace.
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I disagree, there are some occupations which are inherently more stressful then others. I would certainly agree that the quality of ones coworkers contributes greatly towards relieving or apply more stress to a job.
We already do that in the form of class assignments and homework.
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When I was in grade school we had examps on a fairly regular basis. Starting in 6th grade the last exam of the semester was the Final Exam and accounted for 1/4th of our grade. So we had plenty of exams to act as markers. In Texas the semester is divided into 3 periods of 6 weeks each. We had at least one or two exams during those 6 week periods.
ms357 there’s establishing consistent terminology, then there’s having knowledge that is useful in the field. The mastoid process is a bony process, not a muscle, and therefore not something I would be massaging. The knowledge would only be useful as a reference point, and, even though I have difficulty naming the origins and insertions of the 165 muscles I had to learn this semester, if the teacher used the term, I would know what he or she was talking about.
On a practical level, knowing the exact terminology for the bony landmarks beyond a working familiarity really isn’t that important for being a massage therapist. But we have to have all these little factoids memorized to pass the national exam. To get my license I will need to know that the gracilis originates on the inferior ramus of the pubis and inserts at the pes anserinus and be able to regurgitate this fact. In the real world, I will only need to know that the gracilis inserts at a tendon on the front of the tibia just below the kneecap, and originates in a spot where I’d best not be putting my hands if I don’t want to risk being busted for prostitution.
Knowing these precise terms would likely be necessary for medical massage, but that’s a subspecialty. For the average therapist working in a spa, or doing an outcall business, it really isn’t necessary. Telling a client that they have an adhesion in their rectus femoris will only get you a blank look. Telling them they have a big ol’ honkin’ knot in the big muscle on the front of their thigh and you’re going to try to work it out for them works much better. Knowing the name of the muscle in question is important, because there will be occasions when you are unable to work on a client, and if another therapist will be working on them, they need to be able to refer to your notes and see that this client has a lot of tension in his quadratus lumborum, but any decent therapist knows where it is. It’s kind of like the difference between knowing the exact street address and “the green house on the corner with the tile roof on the corner of Elm and eighth street.”
As for a doctor “knowing the bare minimum”, anybody who has ever taken final exams knows that you really don’t retain a lot of what you’ve memorized and regurgitated. What you retain is the applicable knowledge, the stuff you learn hands on. If a patient displays a particular set of symptoms, it’s probably more important to have a good working knowledge of the more common conditions that those symptoms would indicate than to have memorized the entire list of everything it remotely might be. If the tests turn up negative, and the doctor is at a loss, I really wouldn’t have a problem with him cracking open a medical book to see what less common, uncommon, or very rare conditions the symptoms might be.
Memorizing lists of data is not the same as having real-world working knowledge.
Oh, and one more thing.
Managers bust balls for one reason…
because they can.
Ball-busting is not engaged in because the manager thinks it is an effective method of improving the job performance of subordinates. Managers bust balls because they enjoy lording it over others.
That’s fine for your job. Or 90% of the jobs out there where passing familiarity with the subject matter is enough to get by.
You are missing the entire point however. If I am a hiring manager and I see someone with low GPA, I don’t know if they are stupid, if they just never showed up to class, or if they are actually really smart but don’t test well. Maybe they are a great outside of the box thinker. Maybe they just don’t have the ability to retain information.
Performing well in school does not preclude someone from turning to reference material. No one is expected to retain information like Rainman.
First off, I resent the implication that having a good solid working knowledge of musculoskeletal anatomy without being able to regurgitate the information onto a piece of paper constitutes “passing familiarity”. I do know the information quite well. If you showed me a picture of a given muscle within the surrounding bone structures, I could easily identify it, and name it’s origin and insertion points. However, most exams on the subject aren’t structured that way. If I see a question like “name the origin and insertion of extensor digiti minimi” on a page, I’m at a loss. What I usually do is locate the muscle on my own body, and palpate it to its origin and insertions, then answer the question. If it’s a deep-lying muscle, or a small one that is obscured by its neighbors, then I’m going to have a problem. I’d be willing to bet that this is also the case for quite a large number of those 90% of jobs you speak of. The people doing them have a good solid practical knowledge of their fields, but because they are visual or hands-on learners, they would have difficulty answering a question in printed words on a page.
Another point which I stated in a prior post- sometimes the information being memorized isn’t really all that relavant to actually being able to perform the job. A massage therapist can do quite well knowing that the rectus femoris originates at the lower point of the anterior hipbone and inserts on the tendon that attaches on the tibia just below the knee (well, technically, by the time it get there, it has become a ligament). It really isn’t necessary to know that the name of that point on the hipbone is the anterior inferior iliac spine. If you’re going into the subspecialty of medical massage, you will need to know this, but most therapists won’t be going into that field. The same is probably true of many other fields.
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But this is precisely the point I’m trying to make. You don’t know, because the exams they took only measure their ability to memorize and regurgitate information. They aren’t designed to measure whether someone has the ability to understand and apply knowledge in a practical way.
Now let me reverse the issue. If someone has a GPA of 4.0, you don’t know if they’re really smart, just happen to test very well, worked really, really hard, of if they just plain cheated their way through school. You also don’t know if they studied, did well on the exam, then (as many people do) forgot a good portion of what they had learned when the semester was over because they didn’t continute to review the information.
BTW, I just took my Swedish Massage final this morning. I fully expect to receive an A, not because I studied hard (I just reviewed my notes and some relevant portions of the textbook over the weekend, and gave them another looking-over on the bus on the way to campus), not because I am good at memorization (I’m not, by a long shot), but because the instructor gears the questions on his exams toward determining whether the student understands the information presented in class in a practical, usable way. I got lucky, between this and my English composition class (which I also will probably get an A in- writing is cake for me), I’ll probably end up with a GPA of 3.0. I’ll probably end up with a barely passing grade in anatomy, which is almost entirely rote memorization, and a B in shiatsu, which is a fairly even mix of memorization and understanding of concepts.
Also, I’ve been told that when you sit for nationals, you can always pick out the massage students from the ones sitting for exams in other fields (like insurance or real estate). They are the ones feeling themselves up, trying to find the muscles and bony landmarks on their own bodies before answering the anatomy questions.
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But in the end, that’s what the majority of exams measure- the ability to retain information like Rainman.
Understanding the concepts behind the information and being able to put them to use are far more important than memorizing lists of facts, which, if forgotten can be looked up again anyway. Unfortunately, we measure and place the most weight on the latter in determining someone’s grade in most classes. Having a knack for remembering particular facts is not the same as understanding and being able to use information. Hopefully, most people can strike a good balance between the two, but if someone is deficient in one area, I would prefer it be in the area of things that can be found in a book handily placed on a desk.
That’s the joy of being a historian and being in upper-division history classes…you have to write a 20-30 page paper at the end of the semester, but there’s no exam per se.